Environmental Education approach in the documents of Pedagogical Guidelines of the Municipal College Custódio Sento-Sé/Ba/Brasil

International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Science (IJAERS)

https://dx. doi. ora/10.22161/ijaers. 73.49

[Vol-7, Issue-3, Mar- 2020]
ISSN: 2349-6495(P) / 2456-1908(0)

Environmental Education approach in the
documents of Pedagogical Guidelines of the
Municipal College Custodio Sento-Se/Ba/Brasil

Helisandra dos Reis Santos 1 , Clecia Simone Gonsalves Rosa Pacheco 2

'Master of Science in Education - Universidad Autonoma de Asuncion (Paraguay); Specialist in Interdisciplinary Environmental Education
- Federal University of Vale do Sao Francisco (UNIVASF).

2 PhD in Education; Researcher at the Federal Institute of Sertao Pemambucano (IFSPE); Advisor of the Postgraduate Course in
Interdisciplinary Environmental Education - Federal University of Vale do Sao Francisco (UNIVASF).

Abstract — This article presents the analyzes made of a study on the approach of Environmental Education in the
pedagogical activities of the Colegio Municipal Custodio Sento Se/BA, with the aim of analyzing how the
pedagogical guidance documents address Environmental Education. The research has a qualitative,
documentary focus, of a descriptive type, which initially seeks to prepare a literature review on the subject, then
analyzed the Pedagogical Political Project (PPP), in order to collect the information necessary to carry out the
research. Therefore, the result made it possible to realize that the PPP recognizes the importance of the school's
social role and the construction of social values for the promotion of citizenship, however, environmental issues
were not explicitly addressed in the respective document.

Keyword — Environmental Education, Political Pedagogical Project, Awareness.

I. INTRODUCTION

This work aims to analyze how Environmental
Education has been approached in the pedagogical
guidance documents to promote awareness and training of
critical, participatory and autonomous citizens, in an
Elementary School II, at the seat of the municipality of
Sento-Se/BA.

Education has the capacity to transform the
realities experienced by human beings, through
sensitization and awareness, and Environmental Education
is widely discussed today, with the purpose of
demonstrating that social, economic and political factors
are directly related to the changes that the environment has
been suffering.

The development of Environmental Education in
the educational scenario is of paramount importance to
seek balance in the relationship between man and the
natural environment, which is increasingly compromising
the quality of life of society. In view of this, urgent
measures are needed in order to raise people's awareness in
the search for new concepts and ideas about the importance
of preserving the environment, being a participatory and
continuous process in the construction of values,
knowledge and actions.

According to Dias (2004, p. 523) the process is
permanent in which “individuals and the community
become aware of their environment and acquire new
knowledge, values, skills, experiences and determination
that make them able to act and solve environmental
problems, present and future”.

In this way. Environmental Education is a
transversal theme that allows dialogue between different
disciplines, enabling communication and joint action
between education professionals and students, seeking to
show that knowledge is composed by the union of the
contents of the disciplines and that they communicate. It
is a tool capable of bringing a contextualized and
interdisciplinary view.

It is noticed that environmental issues have been
discussed and researched today, and this study aims to
answer the following question: ^How is Environmental
Education addressed in the pedagogical guidance
documents of the School Unit?

In view of the problem of this research, it was
determined to verify the following hypotheses: the
documents of pedagogical guidelines address the theme of
Environmental Education. Or, the pedagogical guidance
documents do not address the issue of Environmental

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[Vol-7, Issue-3, Mar- 2020]
ISSN: 2349-6495(P) / 2456-1908(0)

Education. In this sense, the general objective of this study
is to analyze how the pedagogical guidance documents
address Environmental Education and, to consolidate this
analysis, it was listed as specific objectives: a) To know the
pedagogical guidance documents of the school; b) To
analyze how the Environmental Education is addressed by
the Political Pedagogical Project.

The results found point out that the Pedagogical
Political Project (PPP) does not have an approach that
actually contemplates Environmental Education, thus
hindering the respective approach in the school
environment based on the pedagogical perspective.

n. THEORETICAL REFERENCE

2.1 - The history of Environmental Education

The transformations in the production processes
that occurred after the Industrial Revolution, aroused
concerns on the part of social organizations about
environmental issues worldwide, starting in the 1960s in
the 20th century, because of the levels of pollution and
rising temperatures in the Earth (SAMPAIO, 2011).

In 1972, the United Nations (UN) held the first
meeting to address environmental issues. The United
Nations Conference on the Environment, in Stockholm,
which generated the document called “Declaration of the
UN Conference on the Human Environment”, proclaiming
criteria of relationship between man, production and the
environment, that citizens and companies seek balance to
find the path that leads to sustainable development
(CABEDA, 2017).

Among several determined principles, awareness
and awareness is sought to promote the preservation of
natural resources such as air, water, land, flora, fauna and
parts of natural ecosystems need to be conserved to
guarantee the existence of present and future generations.
Man has the responsibility to preserve and manage the
heritage of flora and fauna and their habitat, which is in
grave danger (COELHO; REZENDE, 2016).

After the Stockholm Conference, some actions
were taken, such as: 1. The United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), took over
the organization of regional and international discussions
on Environmental Education (EA); 2. The International
Seminar on EE was held in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1975;
3. The United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development was held in the city of Rio de laneiro, known
as Rio - 92, where Agenda 21 was created; and, 4. The
Creation of the Environmental Education Treaty for
Sustainable Society and Global Responsibility.

With all these actions, the world begins to worry
about seeking knowledge to address environmental issues.
It was noted the need that global societies need to build
public policies aimed at the conservation and balance of
the environment, establishing principles and rules for the
use of non-renewable natural resources. It is the moment
when the transversal theme - Environmental Education -
starts to be developed within society.

International organizations started to address the
issue of sustainable development after the Rio 92
conference. Agenda 21 was a historic milestone, containing
the commitment of rich countries in relation to poor
countries, each participating country has a duty to
incorporate policies based on the proposal for sustainable
development, with the aim of improving the quality of life
of the population. This document recognizes that poverty
and environmental degradation are intertwined. Proposing
discussions on combating poverty, changing consumption
patterns, combating deforestation. Where it seeks a balance
between the relations of economic development, the
environment and the human being (GOTTARDO, 2003).

2.2 The Need for Environmental Education

Developing actions in a sustainable manner in the
social environment where we operate is a necessity in the
contemporary society scenario. In view of the expansion of
the capitalist economy, which leads to a consumerist
society, causing environmental destruction, such as the
climate changes that we already experience today.

Society must adopt economic attitudes that are
less aggressive to the environment and these attitudes must
come from all nations, from the least developed to the most
developed, with the precept of ensuring quality of life for
the planet and all forms of life that exist on it.

Humanity needs to balance itself in a sustainable
way with the environment, use only what is necessary for
its existence and, seek to reorganize nature preservation
and active actions in an active and quick way, so that we
can ensure the survival of the various forms of life that
inhabits the planet. It is of utmost importance to effectively
program a quality Environmental Education, which brings
in its theme a perspective of raising awareness and
sensitizing people in a more active coexistence in benefits
of the preservation of natural resources, ensuring better
quality of life for all forms of beings existing. It is
necessary that the human species be reeducated in a
perspective of coexistence and respect for the environment,
so that it will generate a mutuality between man and nature
(MORIN, 2016).

Environmental Education is an interdisciplinary,
multidisciplinary theme that needs the support of

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knowledge from various areas acting in partnership to
achieve the holistic of the whole. According to Paviani
(2014, p.16):

[...] it is not too much to reinforce the idea
that interdisciplinarity takes place in each
situation in a peculiar way and presupposes
the integration of knowledge and people, of
units and syntheses of knowledge or of
“content”, of use or application theories
and methods and collaboration (principle of
collaboration) between teachers or
researchers.

Fazenda (2011, p. 75) points out that “the
possibility of being in the world today, understanding and
criticizing the innumerable information that attacks us
daily, can only happen in overcoming the existing barriers
between the disciplines”.

Seeking a dialogue between economic
development, the environment and human beings is one of
the objectives of Environmental Education.

According to Medina and Santos (2008, p.24):

Environmental Education will allow, by its
basic assumptions, a new creative
interaction that redefines the type of people
we want to train and the future scenarios
that we want to build for humanity, in
function of the development of a new
environmental rationality. It is necessary to
train individuals who can respond to the
challenges posed by the dominant
development style, based on the
construction of a new harmonious style
between society and nature and who, at the
same time, are able to overcome merely
instrumental rationality and economist,
which gave rise to the environmental and
social crise that concern us today.

Such assumptions allow us to understand that it is
necessary to integrate society in the search for knowledge,
to understand the changes that the environment has been
undergoing. Environmental Education leads us to the
possibility of exploring, knowing, identifying, describing
and interpreting social behaviors in the search to find new
proposals for changing the relationship and culture of the
human being with the environment through less aggressive
actions, and sources of energy alternatives.

However, the new attitudes must be based on the
lessons learned in the school environment through the
contents studied in the classroom. According to Figaro:

The concrete experience of the students'
lives is not outside the school. Connecting
school content to the interest of young
students presupposes understanding them
as discourse producers, in which they
select, categorize and organize, from their
experiences, all statements addressed to
them (FIGARO, 2010, p.27).

Therefore, Environmental Education, when
developed, allows to promote curricular integration in the
educational environment, developing interdisciplinarity
and contextualization of contents with the lived reality, in
the perspective of integral human formation, seeking to
form autonomous and critical citizens who can interact and
intervene in the environment social environment.

2.3 Environmental Education in the Brazilian
educational scenario

Environmental Education is a term that emerged
only in the 1970s, as a result of concern with the
environmental issue. From then on, the organization of
several events that consolidated such issues began, such
as the Stockholm Conference in 1972, the Rio-92
Conference in 1992, held in Rio de Janeiro, which
established an important measure. Agenda 21, which it
was an action plan for the 21st century aimed at the
sustainability of life on earth (DIAS, 2004).

In Brazil, Environmental Education became law
on April 27, 1999, by Law No. 9,795 - National
Environmental Education Policy, where in its Art. 1:

Environmental education is understood as
the processes by which the individual and
the community build social values,
knowledge, skills, attitudes and
competences aimed at the conservation of
the environment, a common use of the
people, essential to a healthy quality of
life and its sustainability (PNEA, 1999,
pi).

In Art. 2nd states: "Environmental education is
an essential and permanent component of national
education, and must be present, in an articulated manner,
at all levels and modalities of the educational process, in
a formal and non-formal character" (PNEA, 1999, p. 1).

In this perspective. Environmental Education is
not a new discipline, it has an interdisciplinary character.

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where its approach must be integrated and continuous.
Interdisciplinarity requires a broader and more
meaningful view to understand, the concepts, phenomena
and problems of everyday life, through knowledge of
different areas of knowledge. We can observe in the
National Curriculum Parameters (PCNs), “in the school
perspective, interdisciplinarity does not intend to create
new disciplines or knowledge, but to use the knowledge
of several disciplines to solve a specific problem or
understand a particular phenomenon under different
points of view sight”(BRASIL, 1999, p.34-36).

Therefore, we realize that Environmental
Education with Law, is a policy considered recent, widely
discussed today. However, little developed and worked in
the school context.

III. METHODOLOGY

The present research was carried out in the
Municipality of Sento-Se - BA/Brazil (figure 1), located in
the territory of the Sertao do Sao Francisco (figure 2), on
the edge of Lago de Sobradinho, in the North of the State
of Bahia. The Municipality of Sento-Se according to the
Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) has
an estimated population of 40,684 inhabitants and has a
territorial extension of approximately 12,181,239 km2
(IBGE, 2019).

Fig.l: Sento Se/Bahia/Brazil
Source: IBGE (2020)

Source: SECULT/BA (2020)

The School Unit where the research was
conducted was Colegio Municipal Custodio Sento-Se,
located at Pra£a Dr. Juvencio Alves no number,
neighborhood Centro. The school serves classes from
Elementary School II and Youth and Adult Education
(EJA), in the morning, afternoon and evening shifts, with a
population of 955 enrolled students and 57 teachers
(CENSO, 2019).

In order to carry out a research, it is essential to
define how it will be carried out through the design that,
according to Sampieri, Collado and Lucio (2006, p. 154), the
term model means the “plan or strategy designed to obtain
the information that is want ”. For Gonzales, Fernandez and
Camargo (2014, p. 43) “a design of the research is
determined by the type of investigation that is intended to be
carried out, and by the hypothesis that one wishes to verify
during the process”.

The methodological approach was qualitative
because it is related to analyzing, understanding and
interpreting the data of the analyzed documents, about how
the pedagogical guidance documents address the theme of
Environmental Education and reflecting its directions for
activities in teaching practice.

The qualitative approach sought to reach as much
information as possible, aiming to expand the knowledge
under study. Still according to Sampieri et al. (2006, p.15)
"the qualitative research gives depth to the data, the
dispersion, the interpretative richness, the contextualization
of the environment, the details and the unique
experiences". In this sense, it was sought through the
observation moments with the professionals involved in the
research process of that school, to reach deeper results.

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imbued with veracity and feelings and, thus, reconstruct
the reality from their observation, experience and
experience.

According to Gil (2008, p. 8), "one can define
method as a way to reach a certain end". The author also
endorses that “for knowledge to be considered scientific, it
is necessary to identify the mental and technical operations
that make it possible to verify it”. Or, in other words, to
determine the method that made it possible to reach that
knowledge.

The research also had a documentary character,
developed from the survey of documentary analysis of
institutional records. Liidke and Andre (1986) mention that
document analysis can be understood as several operations,
which seeks to study and analyze one or several
documents, aiming to identify information of facts in them,
to find social, economic and ecological circumstances with
which there is a possibility of relationships, focusing on
issues of interest to the research.

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The present study was developed through
documentary analysis of the instruments of pedagogical
guidance of the researched College, in order to understand
how Environmental Education is approached in these
instruments. The instrument used by the School Unit for its
pedagogical organization is the Pedagogical Political
Project (PPP).

Given the moments of analysis of the PPP, it can
be noted that it was built collectively during the year 2011,
and it is explicitly found throughout the text, the search for
citizen training to work in the social environment at the
same time. Which is inserted, as the school's mission. It
was noticed the emphasis given on the social function of
the school, to the formation of values focused on
citizenship, guiding teachers to the construction of a
reflective and contextualized teaching practice.

Starting from the principle that Environmental
Education contemplates the environment as a whole, from
the relationship between people and the use and care for
natural resources, it was analyzed that, when the PPP
mentions the formation of citizens and is concerned with
the school's social function, it is understood that some
principles of Environmental Education are being implicitly
contemplated.

For the National Curricular Guidelines for
Environmental Education, Art. 2:

Environmental Education is a dimension of
education, it is an intentional activity of

social practice, which must give individual
development a social character in its
relationship with nature and with other
human beings, aiming to enhance this
human activity in order to make it full of
social practice and environmental
ethics”(BRASIL/DCNEA, 2012, p.2).

However, it was noticeable that Environmental
Education is not explicitly and objectively included in the
PPP of the school that is the focus of this research.
However, the document is in the process of restructuring.
However, its restructuring is being carried out in stages,
according to the guidelines of the Municipal Department of
Education, and three meetings have already been held.

These meetings were moments of studies for the
appropriation of knowledge from the National Common
Curricular Base (BNCC), so that the PPP's of the
Municipal School Units are rebuilt taking into account the
new trends of the national education scenario. Through the
analysis of the reports built in the three meetings, it was
possible to notice that the theme of Environmental
Education until now has not been considered with the
necessary and emerging notoriety in the face of the crucial
global scenario.

Y. CONCLUSIONS

Addressing the theme of Environmental Education
in contemporary school environments is a necessity in
view of the environmental crises that society has been
facing. Having its principles included in the pedagogical
guidance documents is indispensable so that the theme can
be developed in the pedagogical practice of teachers, to
meet social demands.

The research consisted of the analysis of
pedagogical guidance documents in order to verify if there
is an approach to Environmental Education in the
respective documents. The PPP of Colegio Municipal
Custodio Sento-Se/BA recognizes the importance of the
school's social role and the construction of social values for
the promotion of citizenship, however, environmental
issues are not addressed in an explicit and objective way.

However, contemporary society needs an
education that can work to develop skills, making
individuals able to find solutions to problems through the
interaction of knowledge and people. Much is said about
Environmental Education, but it is still a distant reality
within the School Unit that was researched, taking into
account the instructions contained in the PPP.

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Therefore, the results of this research collaborate
to rethink the fundamental importance of Environmental
Education to be explicit in the pedagogical guidance
documents, enabling the respective approach in the school
environment in an effective way in the teaching
pedagogical practice. Thus, contributing to the formation
of citizens who seek actions to preserve and conserve the
environment, to ensure the survival and quality of life of
the various existing beings.

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